Has the advent of Digital devalued Photography

A common question that pops up routinely is "has the ease and accessibility of digital photography ultimately devalued photography more generally?". A typical example (actually not typical, its a very good discussion) of the debate is this one in the Self Taught Photographers group on FLICKR.

I wont try and make a definitive answer today because I havent got the time or the tools but I would like to add to the debate with a little clarification and a slightly different perspective (though one in keeping with my general feelings on photography).

To begin, I think too many people confuse, are at least arent careful enough to distinguish between "craft" and "art".

Craft, the ability to master all elements of the process of photography to produce an image is definitely degraded and even devalued by digital. While it is true that digital hasnt completely destroyed the craft of photography (meters arent perfect and photoshopping itself requires a degree of perseverance and experimentation) I doubt many would argue that today the level of dedication to master the operation of a modern camera or editing software matched that required by manual film cameras and wet darkrooms.

Art, the ability to know what image is worth making, is however largely unaffected by the appearance of digital. Digital technology has made it easier to make a great image, but it has done little (if anything) to help the person putting it together to know what a great image is.

Personally I dont regret that situation. Personally, the craft of photography has always left me cold. I hated film and still resent having to stop and use a tripod. The mucky muck of getting the image in my head into the camera and onto the computer is something I just want to get over. So I love digital with a passion and revel in how it lets me get to the art quickly.

However, just as there are people that value the hand crafted boat, vase, chair or tapestry and I understand that for others, the loss (at least partially) of the craft of photography is a painful thing.

Sometimes you find just the right thing

A short one tonight.

I'm a keen amateur photographer whose sold a few shots and is considering how to go beyond here and perhaps wondering whats beyond here and well, just wondering......

And while doing this wondering and just circling the drain ready to vanish into nothingness again I found this site, on how to make money from your pictures.

I've just scratched the surface of the site and already I've found stuff that I will be trying to implement and stuff I cant see myself doing. Is it perfect, not at all, but if we all were only ever satisfied with perfection as a starting point why bother getting out of bed in the morning?

So, if, like me, you are thinking that you might like to do beyond just shooting images for the sake of it have a butchers hook (look) at this site.

Why the disproportionate weight to high ISO results

I can never understand the fascination people have with high ISO performance. No camera, even the low light geniuses like the D700 and D3 gets anywhere near its best performance more than 2, maybe 3, stops above its "base" iso. So with a base ISO of (say) 200, you will get your very best sharpness, colour, DR, noise etc etc at 200. This will hold up really well at 400, be pretty close at 800 and be noticeably different though probably still pretty good at 1600. Beyond here the quality fall off is obvious and clearly something you would want to avoid.

And this isnt a Sony thing, or a Nikon thing or a Canon thing - its a physics thing. Look at test photos from any camera and compare its output at ISO 100/200 to what it gets at 800/1600. Its obvious, while the high iso shots might be useable, side by side with the ISO 100/200 they will suck.

Thats probably why as I look through the 20000 odd photo's in my catalog, 95.2% of them are taken at ISO 800 or lower. Another 4.4% are at ISO 1600. And yes, do the maths and you'll see 0.4% of my photos are taken at ISO 3200 or higher.

So frankly I dont really care about high iso performance and whats more, given that most people I speak to have similar sorts of usage patterns I dont understand why most people seem to.

My first stab at listing some mentors/exemplars.

Well I promised myself I would start the process of finding some mentors or exemplars I could use to guide my ideas of what I wanted my photography to be, where I wanted it to go, etc. Well I started in a pretty simple place - a book. I went to my shelf and picked out a nice little book - American Photographs 1900/2000 by James Danzinger, published by Assouline. The I just started at the front and went through every photo, when I came to one I liked (using my definition of "I wish I took that"), I checked on line to see if this was a one off or if the photographer really produced a body of work that grabbed me.

So in the end I came up with this list - its not exhaustive, but its a start (so in no particular order):

Robert Capa

William Klein

Edward Weston

Danny Lyon

Lewis W Hine

Joel Meyerowitz

Alfred Stieglitz

Berenice Abbott

Dorothea Lange

Richard Avedon

Charles Moore

Donna Ferrato

Andrew Bush